Generic proposal for the determination of optimal glazed areas for school buildings in the Northeast Region of Argentina

Abstract

The present work focuses on determining an optimized design proposal that meets thermal and daylighting habitability conditions in school buildings in the hot-humid climate of the Northeast Region of Argentina, in order to evaluate criteria for sizing suitable glazed areas by floor area and exposed envelope area per orientation by taking advantage of ´Passive Solar Energy´, with the consequent reduction of cooling and heating demands. For this purpose, a generic proposal was developed from the validation of multiple simulation physical models of two reference Primary Schools typologies of open and compact floor plan. They were determined as the cases of best and worst behaviour respectively, from the global diagnosis of 63 annual higro-thermal and lighting audits executed in eight school buildings of Resistencia, province of Chaco, in real use conditions. The generic proposal involved the regulation of glazed areas, the integrated sun shading devices design and the opaque envelope treatment integrally, which allowed achieving significant thermal and daylighting behaviour enhancements. In the most unfavourable period of November, a reduction of up 6.0 ºC of the maximum temperature was verified relating the original situations, and therefore, important reductions in its cooling loads of 40 to 60 % on average were obtained.